Talk:Sign stealing

Please be constructive and acknowledge what the sources say

The sources about the 2017 Yankees and Chris Young back my edits, which I even quoted. The 2017 USA Today source even notes how the Yankees were fined.[1]2601:447:4100:C120:1D46:C56A:2D98:BAC2 (talk) 21:58, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Sign stealing/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Larry Hockett (talk · contribs) 04:04, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take this review and will begin with some section-by-section feedback. Larry Hockett (Talk) 04:04, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Lead

• Early in the article you discuss two types of sign stealing (third base coach and catcher), but the lead section acknowledges only that signs can be stolen from the catcher.

Addressed. Ghinga7 (talk) 20:15, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• A big chunk of the body is devoted to the history of sign stealing, but that appears not to be addressed in the lead.

Added a sentence and a source... is this enough? Ghinga7 (talk) 20:15, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

It's relatively weak as a summary of the article, but at least it's better. Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:57, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Legality

• "may be answered with a brushback pitch" - I would state more explicitly that the pitcher will throw a brushback pitch to retaliate; "answered" is likely to be unclear to the non-fan.

Done.

• Could we reword the last sentence of this section? I don't believe in nitpicking wording to death, but the end of this sentence is not very straightforward; it sounds like replay officials and managers are chatting about ways to reduce sign stealing.

I don't see anything that suggests that... If you want, though, I could change it if you have a specific wording in mind. I just don't see how that could be uncomplicated any more. Ghinga7 (talk) 23:05, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

”Before the 2019 season, in an effort to reduce illicit sign stealing, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred...” Larry Hockett (Talk) 10:22, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I still don't see anything that suggests that. What would you like it changed to? Ghinga7 (talk) 20:41, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "suggests that". If you start the sentence like I suggested a couple of lines above, I think you'll be fine. Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:57, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Ah. I misunderstood what you said. I'll get right on it. Ghinga7 (talk) 01:09, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

 Done Ghinga7 (talk) 02:59, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

19th century

• Unlike the 21st century incidents mentioned later, these 19th century incidents are not very well fleshed out. What happened to the suspects in these incidents? How long were these practices thought to have lasted? Are there any available details?

Funny... Muboshgu said pretty much the same thing. I'll probably finish that tomorrow. Ghinga7 (talk) 20:41, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Addressed. There wasn't much, but I scraped together some more information from the existing sources. What do you think?

There's still some very basic information missing here that is readily available in reliable sources. Here is a source describing the incident with the 1897 Phillies in better detail. I got right to it with a Google search for "1897 Phillies cheating" and surely there are others. Larry Hockett (Talk) 18:48, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

20th century

• Much the same issue as the previous section. How many games (days, weeks, whatever...) are we talking about when we say the Giants stole signs to beat the Dodgers in the pennant race? The ESPN Classic source (ref #13 as of now) has a lot more info on this, including the names of the confessing players, the coach and player who were said to have served as relays, and the type of relay system.

Done. See above response.

I see where you added one sentence to this section, but that only addresses the very first piece of my feedback. Larry Hockett (Talk) 18:48, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

• "The only Brave player" - this seems odd (compared to "Braves player"). There are similar non-standard uses, like "Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher".

Addressed. Do you see any more.

• "40 years later" - better to begin a sentence with a word (Forty) and not a numeral.

Addressed.

21st century

• What is the source for the first sentence about the increased frequency?

• Under the 2017 Astros scandal - *"parted ways with Carlos Beltrán". Let's be more direct. Fired?

Actually, no, it says they mutually agreed to part ways in the source. So he wasn't fired, and that's the correct terminology. Ghinga7 (talk) 22:16, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

We should update the WP prose to indicate that Beltrán and the Mets agreed to part ways (rather than a unilateral decision). Larry Hockett (Talk) 10:22, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

• Same sentence - there is a lowercase astros and there is a comma immediately before a parenthesis (after Carlos Beltrán).

• "to discuss sign stealing improvements" - Clarify what that means.

• I think the Astros and Red Sox headings should be formatted in a similar style. Maybe just year, city, and team name for both?

• Current ref #27 is a dead link and is even tagged as such in the reference list.

• What is the significance of "9:57 PM ET" in ref #28?

• Ref #33 - a date is listed where the author normally is.

• The discussion of Chris Young seems to assume that the reader is familiar with a previous Apple Watch scheme, but I don't think that allegations of this scheme are explicitly discussed anywhere.

• On a similar note, there is "the Red Sox were implicated in another sign stealing scandal", but this is the first we're hearing of a scandal in Boston. There are several other sign stealing incidents mentioned in the January 2020 SI source.

• The reader may wonder whether Dombrowski's dismissal was related to internal knowledge of the scandal before it was made public.

• "The same year, a phone conversation" - The section title indicates 2018, but 2017 and 2020 are mentioned in the previous paragraph, so clarify the timing of this.

• In the same sentence, it sounds like you want to say that MLB (not the Rothschild phone call) revealed the issue with the phone call. In general, on WP we focus way too much on when things were revealed though.

• Clarify that Nothing Personal is a podcast, link David Samson, and at least provide a year for the statement.

• Are there other notable reactions? Include the ones that have received multiple mentions in independent reliable sources.

Notable sign stealers

• It sounds odd to say that many players have been considered the best. If it is many, what have those three players done to warrant their names being mentioned here without further explanation?

I don't know about the other 2, but Del Baker was practically famous all throughout baseball during his time as manager because of sign stealing. Pitchers hated playing against Baker's teams because of it.

That would be good info to add for Baker if we can source it adequately, but we cannot wash our hands of the other two at a GA review. I think one of the issues is that you discuss legal and illegal means of stealing signs in the same article, so for BLP reasons, we really shouldn't just throw names out there and label them sign stealers. If you can describe what they were said to have been doing (using reliable sources), let's do that. The SI source has several paragraphs on the specific nature of Nossek's (legal) sign stealing. As it reads right now, this is one of the weakest sections of the article. It probably needs a new section heading, because more than half the content is actually about people who had objections to sign stealing. Larry Hockett (Talk) 18:48, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

• The New York Post (which is listed as no consensus as far as reliability at WP:RSP) suggests that Baker stole signs, but then it just mentions Baker picking up on a hesitation before a particular pitcher would throw a breaking ball. Are there other sources that speak to Baker's actual sign stealing?

I think it would be fine for something non-politics related, but I also added a reference from "The Glory of their Times."

• Worthington is described in the SI source as being deeply religious, but it doesn't explicitly state that his religious convictions were what led him to object to cheating. It also doesn't mention anything about Christianity.

• We need a source for Herzog being known to complain about this. He managed for ~28 years and it looks like the source mentions two times that he complained but it doesn't say to me that he had a reputation for doing so.

• "put a Texas Ranger or somebody out there" - usually we don't link inside a quote, but I wonder if there is some other way to clarify that he meant the law enforcement group and not a Texas Rangers player.

Since there is a relatively large amount of feedback here, I'll take another look at the entry once the above has been addressed. Good luck - and thank you for your efforts to improve baseball articles on Wikipedia. Larry Hockett (Talk) 08:07, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Ghinga7 - Could you let me know what your plan is for addressing the rest of this feedback? I am okay with extending a review beyond the suggested seven-day period if there is significant progress being made, but it doesn't look like much is being done on this one, even 11 days after the feedback was posted. With the amount of work still left to do, it may make more sense to close this nomination, work on it outside the time constraints of a GA review, and then re-nominate it. Let me know what you think. I appreciate your interest in the entry either way. Larry Hockett (Talk) 13:37, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Hey Larry Hockett! Sorry for not responding in a while, have been kind of busy. I plan on addressing the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries today. I would like to keep this open for a couple more days, and if I don't do anything substantial, you could fail. Thanks for your patience! Ghinga7 (talk) 17:13, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Also pinging Muboshgu, who created the article. They might be able to help with some of the things on this list. Ghinga7 (talk) 17:55, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Ghinga7, I'll check in on this this week if I can. Haven't read through the review yet. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:54, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to close this review since we have been going for more than three weeks and still have a significant amount of unaddressed feedback from the review. This is nothing personal; in fact, it's mostly out of respect for the nominators of other articles in the GAN backlog. This article is an important addition to WikiProject Baseball. I appreciate the nominator's interest in improving the coverage of baseball on WP.

Before re-nominating this for GA, I hope a potential nominator will consider my review feedback above. Some of the feedback should be simple to address, but some of it is going to require more work - rewriting certain passages to make them consistent with the references, adding some basic details (with sourcing) of the early incidents (see WP:RECENTISM), and figuring out how to organize the later sections of the article (such as the section on notable sign stealers that includes people who are said to have been opposed to sign stealing). After making such adjustments, a WP:GOCE request may be helpful before another GA review. Larry Hockett (Talk) 04:50, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Football

In light of the Michigan Wolverines football sign-stealing scandal currently sweeping the college football headlines, this current baseball article needs to be expanded or disambiguated from the sign stealing in gridiron football and possibly other sports.

PK-WIKI (talk) 04:53, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 26 April 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Clear consensus against move proposal. Which was a bad-faith nom by a sockpuppet who was clearly getting their jollies by starting (and badgering) absurd yet slightly plausible move discussions without any real need or evidence. This was just trolling and we can end this farce. (non-admin closure) oknazevad (talk) 05:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

---

Sign stealing → Sign stealing (baseball) – As evident in the hatnote, the actual act of stealing physical street signs could be confused with the baseball term. Seeing this title, with no further context, wouldn’t exactly bring to mind the baseball term. This RM would clear such confusion and would clarify that the baseball act is, well… for baseball. DS537(WIR) 14:17, 26 April 2024 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE – Muboshgu (talk) 17:33, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Hat notes work just fine for this purpose. A disambiguator is unnecessary. – Muboshgu (talk) 14:25, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  Steel1943 is correct below that a disambiguation page for "Sign stealing" is unnecessary and this should remain unmoved per WP:PRECISE. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:36, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support How the current title has remained like this for so long is honestly baffling. Jasp7676 (talk) 15:21, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

  ...is honestly baffling: How so? Under what guideline?—Bagumba (talk) 10:23, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support It's not baffling that the editors in one specific topic think that their use is primary over unrelated topics (I've seen similar many times), but the primacy of the baseball term seems dubious to me. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:10, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  Here's a Google search result to show you the primacy of the sports usage. The Michigan Wolverines football team is high in the current search results. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:35, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Comment: This nomination does not specify what is to happen to the leftoverbrefirecf title Sign stealing in the event this page is moved. Is the plan to retarget Sign stealing to Street sign theft, convert Sign stealing to a disambiguation page, or something else? @DirtySocks357(WreckItRalph): What say you? (Also, if the purpose ends up being to just give this article a disambiguator but leave Sign stealing pointing towards it, I will oppose oppose per WP:PRECISE.) Steel1943 (talk) 16:20, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for asking, @Steel1943. What say I? Well, I would agree with any consensus for how to proceed with Sign stealing; the ultimate outcome can be determined by WP:RFD or here if appropriate. Now if I were to currently determine the best course of action, I would have the base title redirect to the baseball term. DS537(WIR) 16:54, 26 April 2024 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE – Muboshgu (talk) 17:33, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

That's the worst of both worlds. If Sign stealing and Sign stealing (baseball) are the same article, then why would we keep the unnecessary disambiguation in the title? 162 etc. (talk) 21:39, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

It’s not unnecessary disambiguation; baseball stealing of signs is known as “sign stealing”, but at the same time, such a title may be confused with Street sign theft. In any case, I would ultimately support any consensus on the matter. DS537(WIR) 23:04, 26 April 2024 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE – Muboshgu (talk) 17:33, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

...So, you are advocating for the title "Sign stealing" to be replaced with a disambiguation page? Steel1943 (talk) 23:08, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

No, but for it to redirect to the new Sign stealing (baseball); but that’s just what I find to be the best alternative. Feel free to ask other editors for input! DS537(WIR) 23:13, 26 April 2024 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE – Muboshgu (talk) 17:33, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

@DirtySocks357(WreckItRalph): "...the ultimate outcome can be determined by WP:RFD or here if appropriate." It needs to be decided in this discussion since we should not cause a blatant policy violation while waiting for a resolution in another forum (WP:RFD). As stated in my previous edit, I now officially oppose (and removed my bolding from this discussion thread for clarity so it does not look like I'm voting twice.) Steel1943 (talk) 22:43, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

• supportregardless of whether we use a hatnote or a dab page 'Street sign theft' is teh primary topic for 'sign stealing'—blindlynx 17:56, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  Based on what evidence? – Muboshgu (talk) 18:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  mostly WP:ASTONISH but upon reviewing pageviews it seems there isn't a primary topic so this should be DABed anyways—blindlynx 22:17, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  That's an incorrect comparison of page views of two different titles—Sign stealing and Street sign theft—not parenthetically disambiguated titles. The WikiNav data doesn't show "Street sign theft" as even among the top 20 clicks out from "Sign stealing".—Bagumba (talk) 10:27, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

• Weak support the current title may WP:ASTONISH people. The basketball meaning has 1,607 views compared with 1,562[[2]] for the theft meaning. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:44, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. Justified primary topic; the current hatnote works fine. 162 etc. (talk) 21:39, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose as proposed per my comment above since the move as proposed and explained by the nominator is a WP:PRECISE violation since it unnecessarily adds a disambiguator to the title without any changes made to the base name (since the undisambuguated title will redirect to the disambiguates title). However, with that being said, I will create the proposed moved destination as a redirect to the article's current title. Steel1943 (talk) 22:39, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  With that being said, I have no opinion about the alternative options: The leftover redirect being retargeted to Street sign theft after the move or being overwritten by a disambiguation page. Steel1943 (talk) 22:47, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  As my previous comments, I have a weak support for the base name to redirect to Sign stealing (baseball); any consensus otherwise would be fine with me. DS537(WIR) 23:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE – Muboshgu (talk) 17:33, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support per nominator. When I first read the nomination, I thought "sign stealing" referred to physical theft of street signs as well. JIP | Talk 12:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

  WP:NOTWHATFIRSTCOMESTOMIND —Bagumba (talk) 01:06, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose, the term is related and functional in baseball, and is well-known where the game is played professionally. And per comments above. As for the tangential criminal theft of street signs, that's taken care of in the hatnote. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:06, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose The terminology in the article titles is similar (stealing/theft) but not identical. There is enough subtle differentiation to justify a "Not to be confused with" hatnote, and because of that no disambiguation is necessary. Rgrds. --BX (talk) 19:35, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

  Surely people stealing street signs can be said to be sign stealing too, even if the article isn't titled that. This reasoning doesn't make sense. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:58, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose a hatnote is sufficient for clearing up any confusion. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 17:22, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
• Comment FWIW, the user who proposed this move, and had made other disruptive move proposals[3][4], has been blocked as a sockpuppet. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:30, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose on procedural grounds as this move request was made by a sock puppet, who has allegedly engaged in other disruptive behavior. cookie monster 755 23:54, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose The hatnote directs people that may have landed at the wrong page. The WikiNav data doesn't show Street sign theft as even among the top 20 clicks out from Sign stealing. Comparing page views of disparate titles (Sign stealing vs. Street sign theft) is misguided, and there's no evidence that plain "sign stealing" is a common term for "street sign theft".—Bagumba (talk) 10:37, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per Steel and Bagumba. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:49, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.